Hewlett Packard Is Not Socially Responsible

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Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) is supposed to ensure that member companies “meet and exceed global human rights standards.”

So why does BSR accept conference sponsorship from Hewlett Packard (HP) when HP is complicit in human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories and within Israel?

  • HP manages the Israel government’s population registry and ID systems which divide the population by ethnicity and religion and are used to segregate and control Palestinians both within Israel and in the occupied West Bank. HP’s role is very similar to that of Polaroid during the apartheid era in South Africa.
  • In the West Bank, HP’s Basel system is installed at Israeli military checkpoints and is part of the apparatus used to deny Palestinians freedom of movement within their own land.
  • HP runs the Israeli navy’s information technology infrastructure and has supplied all PCs to the Israeli military since 2009. In attacks on Gaza in the summer of 2014 alone, the Israeli military killed over 2200 people, overwhelmingly civilians, including 521 children.
  • HP has business ties with two of the largest settlements in occupied Palestine. Settlements are recognized as illegal by every country in the world except Israel.

Here’s a partial list of groups taking action against HP: the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, The Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the Mennonites, the American Friends Service Committee, the Friends Fiduciary Corporation, and regional conferences of the United Methodist Church.

The list keeps on growing.

1. www.whoprofits.org/company/hewlett-packard-hp
2. www.globalexchange.org/economicactivism/hp/why
3. UN office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf
4. “Boycott businesses that profit from Israeli settlements: – UN Special Rapporteur
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=12700&LangID=E

Now it’s time for BSR to speak up and let HP know its business in Israel and Palestine is socially irresponsible.

E-mail BSR President and CEO Aron Cramer at acramer@bsr.org

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